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Binny using Afghan heroin trade to finance self, hard boyz
Osama bin Laden is using cash from the Afghanistan heroin market to finance his life on the run, paying bodyguards and buying off warlords in Pakistan, says a congressman who has visited the region. Rep. Mark Steven Kirk, Illinois Republican, said in an interview that bin Laden's al Qaeda terror organization is reaping $28 million a year in illicit heroin sales. Some of the money is funding bin Laden's fugitive status as he pops back and forth between Pakistan's semi-autonomous tribal areas and Afghanistan's eastern mountain regions."We now know al Qaeda's dominant source of funding is the illegal sale of narcotics," said Mr. Kirk, a member of the House Appropriations foreign operations subcommittee. Mr. Kirk said that, while bin Laden has lots of allies in the Waziristan tribal lands east of Kabul, Afghanistan, he does not speak the native tongues and cannot trust everyone as his entourage moves from place to place. "He is a foreigner in a strange land," Mr. Kirk said. "He must have money to buy off the local warlords. Operating a clandestine, heavily armed organization takes money and running narcotics is the natural way." A Pentagon adviser on drug policy said Mr. Kirk is "on target." "We know of individuals in Afghanistan who continue to fund al Qaeda with drug proceeds," the Pentagon adviser said. The congressman believes the way to catch bin Laden is to cut off his money. "We have to nail the drug-lord financing first," he said. "Once you hit his income, you head off his ability to pay local warlords." Bin Laden's major supplier, U.S. authorities say, is Haji Bashir Noorzai, a former Taliban financier who smuggles heroin from the Kandahar area to al Qaeda in Pakistan. The Pentagon adviser said Noorzai helped finance al Qaeda when it operated with the Taliban. The alliance continues to this day. In return for money, Noorzai gets al Qaeda operatives who move his drugs offshore. "If we are able to take out a couple of kingpins, suddenly bin Laden would have to miss a payment to his warlords," Mr. Kirk said. He said the U.S. obtains "credible reports" on al Qaeda and drugs from "people who have contact with the outer ring of the bin Laden organization." One piece of evidence of al Qaeda drug connection arose last winter, when the U.S. Navy intercepted small boats in the Arabian Sea off the coast of Pakistan and seized large quantities of heroin. Mr. Kirk said the U.S. military interrogated four crewmen and learned they were al Qaeda operatives taking the drugs to the United Arab Emirates. In Quetta, Pakistan, a kilo of heroin fetches $2,000; in the United Arab Emirates, the same quantity brings $10,000. "This was an attempt by al Qaeda to develop a downstream retail market at which they could increase their profits five times," he said. "[Bin Laden] requires his own protection, and the kind of security apparatus that he is supposed to have around him, that gives a very big signature," Lt. Gen. Safdar Hussain told Reuters. "There is not an inch of South Waziristan or the tribal area which we have not swept time and again, and if he was here in the tribal areas, I can assure you that he wouldn't have escaped my eyes and ears." But the Pentagon adviser cautioned that "just because they throw up their hands and say he's not here, don't believe he's not." "You've got to remember that area has strong support for bin Laden." Posted by: Dan Darling 2004-12-06 |
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